What's in Store for SUSE in 2012

It's been a long, strange trip for SUSE. What started in 1992 as a small German company with a derivative of Slackware Linux became a mighty Linux distribution in its own right. Money problems led to a sale to Novell in 2003, which had its own share of troubles.

Finally Novell was sold to Attachmate in a deal that closed in April of this year. Attachmate then decided to spin SUSE off into its own business, and tapped Nils Brauckmann as president and general manager of the unit.

To get a sense what SUSE is in for in 2012, I talked to Brauckmann this morning. Brauckmann's involvement with SUSE started with Attachmate's purchase, so the first time we spoke was earlier this year just after he took over the role. This time I found him much readier to discuss details of the SUSE strategy, if not every minor product detail.